Ellen G. White and Her Critics

10. Mrs. White’s Prayer of Blessing on Papers

When the copies of Present Truth came from the press, Mrs. White, along with others, knelt beside those papers in prayer and called down the blessing of heaven upon the message the papers contained, and then sent out those papers for all to read. Now, it is charged, these papers set forth the doctrine that there was no more salvation for sinners, and yet the alleged prophet of God gives them the blessing of her prayers. EGWC 232.1

We are supposed to conclude from this that if Mrs. White had been a true prophet, she would, from the very outset, have discerned and repudiated every error that her associates might hold, and would have refused to pray for any piece of literature that was not wholly free from all error. When the matter is thus stated, the fallacy of the argument under examination begins to be evident. The Bible does not describe prophets as omniscient; that is, that they know all things, and that they can immediately expose all errors, and that, indeed, they will proceed without fail to do just this whenever error is present. EGWC 232.2

There is nothing more clearly revealed in the Bible than that prophets have limitations. Furthermore, Bible prophets have written some things hard to be understood, which have been cited by infidels in an attempt to prove, not simply that the prophets were limited in understanding, but that they reflected nothing but the current thought around them. On more than one occasion prophets of old gave prayers of blessing in behalf of men whose lives revealed far more troublesome views than the shut-door ideas of our Seventh-day Adventist pioneers. In fact, some of those who were thus blessed in ancient times were polygamists. But prayers are not to be confused with revelations or prophesyings. A prayer arises from a human being, even though he be a prophet, but a prophecy comes down from God. When David talked to the prophet Nathan about building a house for the Lord, Nathan gave him his blessing, told him to go forward, and do all that was in his heart. But that night God gave to Nathan a vision that led him to speak differently on the morrow to David. (2 Samuel 7:1-17.) EGWC 232.3